I’m a little disturbed that I haven’t posted here since last Tuesday because I could have sworn that I had. I hate it when I start losing time, it usually means that I’m overdoing things a little and falling prey to the brain fog that’s common in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

………..

So, another Tuesday, another look at the concept of mess. I’m considering it from a slightly different angle this week.

DRAWING A LINE IN THE SAND

I had an interesting experience last week: someone contacted me offering to ‘moneterize’* my blog with an advertising link. I politely declined and then got a slightly cheeky email back saying, amongst other things, that ‘it’s just a link’.

But it isn’t just a link.

While I’m flattered to be asked, adding advertising to my site is not something I want to do. One of the reasons my site looks good is because it isn’t covered with too much visual information. This is deliberate choice on my part. I loathe the way places like MySpace look, I find them almost nauseating in their visual clutter and one of the first things I said to my web designer was, “I want my site to be clean.” My designer did a fantastic job making a sleek, beautiful and functional space for me and I do my part by not messing it up!

My site is an area in my life - one of the few - where mess doesn’t randomly proliferate because I have to make a conscious decision to make a mess here; I can’t just randomly wander through, put something down and wander off again. Instead, I resist the temptation to put lots of stuff up on my sidebars. I think long and hard about every single item that goes up there and on occasion I’ve decided not to put up things that might benefit me because I feel that the resulting visual clutter would outweigh the benefits.

Why would I compromise that purity by putting someone else’s advertising on here?

I don’t need advertising on this site, it’s not expensive to run and I consider it part and parcel of the ongoing costs of being an artist. Paying for my hosting once a year is no less important to my art than buying art materials, getting business cards printed or buying art books and magazines for research.

I make no money. In the 5 years since I graduated, I haven’t had to pay taxes once because even when I had a part time job, I’ve never made enough to exceed the personal tax allowance. I survive through the good will of my partner who financially supports me. So you’d think that I’d jump at the chance to get a bit of extra cash.

But there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Having advertising on this site would be messy and I feel that it would compromise my art. I’m not saying that it’s evil to advertise. Every artist must make the decision about whether to accept advertising for themselves. For some artists it might be the right choice. For me, it’s not.

I was trying to pin down exactly why it isn’t right for me when I read this spot-on blog post by Seth Godin last night and had an lightbulb moment. He writes:

Here’s the essential truth:

This is the first mass marketing medium ever that isn’t supported by ads.

If a newspaper, a radio station or a TV station doesn’t please advertisers, it disappears. It exists to make you (the marketer) happy.

That’s the reason the medium (and its rules) exist. To please the advertisers.

But the Net is different.

It wasn’t invented by business people, and it doesn’t exist to help your company make money.

That’s it exactly! My blog does not exist to make YOU money. Heck, it doesn’t even exist to make ME money, although it may well have that effect in the long run. Certainly part of the reason it exists is to increase my profile in the art world and hopefully to garner me real world art opportunities but mostly it exists simply because I like to write, share photos and talk to other interesting artists.

Not everything in the world is for sale and I value having this one clean, controlled space in a mostly messy life far, far more than I’d value a few extra quid in my bank account.

* Incidentally, can we please take the word ‘moneterize’ out back and have it shot!

I’ve been seeing references to Messy Tuesdays for a couple of months now. I thought, ‘hmm, sounds right up my street’ but didn’t follow it up. And then, whilst following a link from the excellent needled blog yesterday, I found the fascinating Felix and discovered that, along with Lara, she was one of the originators of the Messy Tuesdays idea.

Here’s Lara’s post introducing the idea of Messy Tuesday and Felix’s original post, complete with manifesto…

Messy Tuesdays Manifesto:

You are not your flawless surfaces. You are not your orderly laundry-pile. You are not the seamlessness of your Finished Objects. You are not your risen cakes. You are not your sewn-in ends.

Messy Tuesdays seems to have struck a cord with many bloggers. Felix’s post, Mess Is Beautiful has inspired me to order some Toni Morrison from the library. The F-Word addresses the feminist aspects of domestic mess but Penny points out that someone has to clear up. I loved the story behind this box of tangled threads on Practical Polly’s blog. The needled blog celebrates mess while mootthings experience with breeding plant pots will doubtless be familiar to every gardener.

Here’s my contribution to the conversation:

Mess is a vital part of art. Without mess there can be no art. That doesn’t mean that all artists are inherently messy - although many are - just that the creative process itself is not a tidy one. There are wrong turns, false starts, abandoned pieces, 3am ideas scrawled frantically in sketchbooks, creative messes left lying on desks and in corners. Even if you are a tidy artist who puts things away when you’re done, in the midst of creating it’s likely that paint is smeared all over your palette, your pencils are in disarray, fabric pieces are scattered randomly around your sewing machine or you have clay, paint or plaster lodged under your fingernails.

And more than the purely physical mess of creating, there is that singular moment in many art pieces when chaos descends and you can no longer see what it is you are doing. The original purpose gets lost and suddenly there is only messy paint on canvas, confused lines on paper or a hideous lump of clay beneath your hands. This is the point where many people give up, not realising that this moment of sheer chaos is the fertile ground where new art grows. Not all your creative seeds will grow into something wonderful and worthwhile - some just stay messes - but without the courage to step into the messy, uncomfortable, annoying part of the creative process, nothing new will arrive.

I can’t write about Messy Tuesday without spotlighting a mess of my own. Here’s the current state of my bed.

Kirsty Hall: Messy Bed, July 2008

Yes, my bed; the place that all the magazine articles and decluttering books tell you should be a romantic, restful haven. Notice how mine is covered with work instead! Here we have piles of books and magazines that I’m in the midst of reading, a journal, pens, a roll of pencils, several pads of cartridge paper, a pile of finished drawings, a pile of unfinished drawings, drawing board (what, you don’t have a drawing board on your bed?) and lots of lists.

Why don’t I put it all on the floor next to the bed? Er, well, there isn’t room…

Kirsty Hall: Messy Bedroom Floor, July 2008

I will be tidying this soon as it’s getting to the ‘too much on the bed’ stage. That doesn’t mean the bed will be empty when I’m done, just that I’d like to change the sheets before starting a new, fresher pile of work!

I’ve always noticed cast iron. Even as a kid I was fascinated by the different shapes of gates and railings. Maybe it’s because there’s a history of blacksmithing on my mum’s side: if I’d been born a boy in an earlier generation, I might have spent my days banging bits of metal into ornate curves. So it’s no surprise that I like to take pictures of railings, especially when they’re deliciously rusty.

This railing is really unusual. I’ve not seen another one like it and I can’t work out what era it’s from.

Kirsty Hall: Rusty Railings, May 2008

Kirsty Hall: Rusty Railings, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Rusty Railings, June 2008

These railing are just round the corner from me and the design is clearly based on oak leaves.

Kirsty Hall: Ornate Railings, June 2008

I like it when you can tell what the original design is meant to be; sometimes they’re so over-painted that it’s just a vague organic blob. This decorative cast iron rose is still recognisable but it’s becoming softer and less distinct with every layer of paint.

Kirsty Hall: Cast Iron Rose, June 2008

Two of our ceilings have been painted so often that none of us can decipher the original pattern of the plaster mouldings. One day I decided it was ‘baby feet and broccoli’ and that has stuck.

See what I mean…

Kirsty Hall: Cream Plaster Mouldings, June 2008

The white baby feet in the kitchen aren’t quite as obscured but I’ve still no idea what it’s meant to be.

Kirsty Hall: White Plaster Mouldings, June 2008

Maybe one day I’ll get up a very tall ladder and strip all the layers of paint off, but somehow I doubt it: I think we’re stuck with baby feet and broccoli.

I am in a place of struggle with my art right now (as indeed, I often am).

I am second-guessing myself all the time. Is this embroidery good? Is there any point to it? Does it mean anything? Is it derivative and boring?

Bah, and indeed, humbug.

The chief enemy of creativity is “good” sense.
Pablo Picasso

I often have to trick my analytical side into letting me make art because my art is essentially nonsensical. It’s a daft thing to do. Putting thousands of pins in a piece of fabric or tying thousands of knots in bits of string is loopy, I’ve always understood that, whilst at the same time (mostly) believing that it still has value. Yet holding those two opposing beliefs (this is daft/ this is worthwhile) in balance is not always an easy thing to do.

It’s hard to make art when your mind is tied up in knots like this. Often it seems that we artists spend most of our time clearing out the junk in our heads that stops us making, instead of actually making. Hmmm, perhaps it’s time to read one of my favourite books, Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, which is all about how not to quit. I reread it at least once a year, it helps get me through times of doubt like this.

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso

I want to get back to uncomplicated creating, making without thinking, joyful making. I miss it. Perhaps I will drag out my pens this afternoon, lie in bed and just draw and draw and draw. I know when I feel like this - dissatisfied, antsy and annoyed with myself and my art - that work is the only cure. I might not make anything good but even lousy art usually moves things along.

One final note: I’m not looking for sympathy here. I am not in crisis, despair or needing reassurance that my art is good: I’ve been through this many, many times before and I know that I will pull out of it and start making again, usually with renewed vigour and enthusiasm. I am well aware that this is a natural part of the artistic process that most artists periodically go through. I’m putting this out there in the hope that other people will learn that this is just part of making art and so that they don’t despair when it happens to them.

And now I’m going to go and take a walk with my camera to get some fresh air, buy something yummy for dinner and hopefully clear my head.

Hmm, apparently I did something weird this morning and this post vanished into the ether even though I’m sure I published it. Even more annoying, it didn’t save most of it, so I’ve had to rewrite it. Fortunately most of it is based on an old piece of writing from way back in 2001, so it wasn’t too much work. I’ve even managed to put in a couple of pictures - if I’m very patient, I can link to photos that are already on Flickr, I just can’t upload any new ones. Using dial-up is like wading through treacle and I can’t wait to get back to the 21st century and a fast broadband connection although I am enjoying hearing the old modem sound again, it’s quite the nostalgia trip.

Anyway, it’s time to raid the vaults… this has been edited slightly to tighten up the language and grammar but is more or less unchanged from the original.

Still Life
1/7/01

I have come to realise that much of what I make is actually Still Life. My photographs, in particular, have a Still Life sensibility. I am looking at small things - like hot raspberries on the beach or the reflection in a bowl of water - and saying that they are small yet important. It seems to me that that is what most Still Lives do: they take everyday things and set them apart so we can truly see them.

Kirsty Hall: Blue Bowl Reflection, circa 1999

Still Life demands that we really look at the flagon of wine and the apple; the bowl of cherries; the lifeless carcasses. It ponders the flowers, the glass and the tablecloth. It shows us the texture of everyday life and forces the realisation that actually these things are amazing: the bread we eat, the soft cheese, the pile of fruit, the luscious cakes, the humble or grand spread. This is what keeps us alive after all. This is what nourishes us. Of course we also need vast epic pictures of the imagination and portraits that force us to look at our frail human bodies. We need art to consider many things but it seems odd that Still Life should so often have been considered the least important subject matter in art, when it deals so intimately with life and death.

Kirsty Hall: Grape Stem, May 2003

Mortality is a vital component of many Still Lives. Those flowers will soon be dead: they are just caught for a moment in time. Caught at the point of perfection? Or perhaps already weeping their petals onto the rough-hewn table or perfect lace. That food will spoil or be devoured by a hoard of hungry mouths. Even that fine glass goblet will eventually be broken or lost. The table itself will be consumed by history. Who knows what happened to the musical instruments, the sheet music or the pile of books? They are lost to us except for this captured image.

It is that quality of stillness that I love most about Still Lives. More and more my work has been edging towards stillness and quiet, not actual silence but definitely quietness. I think I am looking for contemplation and the mysterious void. Stillness is a quality that I associate strongly with the colour white, which is why I think my work has contained so much white in the last two years. I am searching for that perfect moment perhaps, that moment of clarity and stillness?

I have a problem with categories. Basically, I’m just not very good at them. I find it difficult to choose tags for blog posts. I have too many sets on my Flickr account. I have too many email folders. I struggle with organising my filing cabinet. I desperately need to go through and rationalise all these things but it doesn’t come easily to me.

In terms of organisation, this is obviously A Very Bad Thing. I constantly lose things and I sometimes avoid tidying up because I simply can’t decide where stuff should go. And then I end up with this sort of thing!

Kirsty Hall: Messy Study, May 2008

[I've tidied my desk since this was taken because the photo appalled me so much. If you have problems keeping your desk clear, check out Inspired Home Office for resources that may give you the push you need. Since tidying up this disaster zone, I've been noticeably more motivated and I'm feeling more on top of things.]

I do have systems but things still stump me. I’ve got a box that’s been sitting in my study unsorted and neglected for 6 months because it’s full of the sort of random objects that I find almost impossible to categorise. The pile of papers to be sorted into my filing cabinet is so large that it’s developed geographical layers and may actually have started to fossilise down at the bottom.

Since I’m so visual, I sometimes wonder if I should simply file things by colour - but I know that I’d just end up spending ages trying to decide if objects were blue or green instead because having trouble with categories is a global failure in my brain.

TIME TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE…

However, while it’s a problem in terms of organisation, being bad at categories can be a distinct advantage for an artist because you can see across boundaries to make associative leaps than non-artists often don’t. Leaps of logic that make perfect sense in KirstyLand often seem innovative and original to others.

For example, this piece called Lost was made for an exhibition in a church. To make the piece, I carefully broke an unglazed bowl, then mended it with glue, leaving deliberate holes. For the exhibition, the bowl was placed on linen and filled with salt water, which gradually evaporated through the porous clay.

Kirsty Hall: Lost, 2003

Lot’s Wife was the inspiration for the piece and I combined her familiar story with the Japanese tradition of mending broken bowl with gold to make them more valuable than when they were whole. I’d read about this several years before and had been utterly captivated by the idea of regarding a mended object as beautiful and powerful instead of flawed and damaged. Somehow in my head, this linked with my sympathy for Lot’s Wife, who was forced to leave not only her home but two of her adult children. In that situation, what mother wouldn’t turn back to see what had happened? Isn’t it interesting that she’s usually held up as an example of female disobedience but if you turn it around, her story can just as easily be interpreted as being about the power of maternal love.

Kirsty Hall: Lost, 2003

As artists, we need to turn things around. We have to learn to look at our problems and disadvantages to see if they also contain power and wisdom for us. It’s time to recognise that the things that make us bad at fitting into the ‘real world’ are sometimes the exact same things that keep us making our art.

I sometimes think I was dreadfully scarred by growing up in the 70’s. I look at the things I make and I can see the legacy of string pictures and macramé.

3 Score & 10 vs crazy 70’s macramé birdcage.

Kirsty Hall: 3 Score & 10, Jan 2006

Random Macrame found on internet but unfortunately I’ve lost the link

I rest my case!

Well, what can I say? Apart from reproduction prints of paintings or images in books, string pictures and macramé were the primary examples of art that I saw as a child. My parents aren’t big art people plus I had three noisy younger brothers so although I’m sure I must have seen paintings in museums, I don’t remember visiting an actual art gallery until I was in my teens. By the time I was 15, I had started taking myself off to galleries at every opportunity and had broadened my art horizons a little but before then, pins and string had featured highly in my formative visual experiences.

Ha, you should think yourselves lucky that I don’t feel an overwhelming urge to make all my art in shades of orange and brown!

I started a new piece on Wednesday and to my eyes it’s got a distinctly 70’s look, probably because it’s on brown linen. It’s another thread drawing but from a brand new series. I’ve been contemplating this particular series for a while now; it’s all to do with pithy phrases, emotional tension, domesticity and lots and lots of red thread. For ages I’ve been collecting strange trite sayings that people use - things like “well, I suppose it could be worse” or “but apart from that, how are you”. I’m fascinated by the emotional gaps in language, the way we use clichés and meaningless phrases, especially in Britain, to cover a vastness of things unsaid. For some reason, this is connected in my mind with endless images of red thread.

Kirsty Hall: Red Drawing, May 2008

I had an image in my head of a red thread drawing on raw linen that I wanted to test out. I found a natural framed linen canvas that may work although I’m not entirely sure about it because it’s sized with clear primer and I think it might be too glossy and stiff. For some reason, I’m a lot more comfortable sewing on framed canvases meant for painting than on loose fabric and when I was in the craft shop, I got scared by the proper linen embroidery fabric and coped out and bought a sized canvas instead. This one is my test piece to see if I can live with the sized surface or if I need to make that intellectual leap and do ‘proper embroidery’ on ‘real fabric’.

It’s odd: intellectually I know that what I’m doing is probably embroidery but I don’t think of it as sewing. Instead, I always think of it as a very slow and laborious way of drawing.

With little bits of thread.

On fabric.

I mean, obviously I know it is sewing. Except that in my head, it isn’t. I cannot explain this.

Kirsty Hall: Red Drawing, May 2008

I don’t know why I feel this way about using cloth. A couple of years ago, I started doing sewn drawings on felt and that didn’t bother me so it’s clearly something to do with the fabric. When I was about 7 or 8, I had a scary primary school teacher who endlessly criticising the sloppiness of my stitches and I suspect this has a lot to do with my fear of using ‘real fabric’ and doing ‘real sewing’. I did like threading shoelaces through pictures with holes in them though (did anyone else do that, what was it supposed to teach us?) and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I now pierce holes in my canvases before threading my needle through. Actually, you have to when using sized canvas because if you make a mistake, the hole doesn’t close up again but I also think it takes me to a safer, happier place than the word ‘embroidery’ does.

I’m a fairly slow artist at the best of times: I like to potter, to muse, to drink lots of cups of tea and endlessly faff around. I generally only work in a very fast and focused way if I’ve got a deadline. I’ve always berated myself for this - feeling that I ought to be one of those artists who works for 10 hours every single day of my life, despite the fact that I’ve never been that sort of artist. Trying to be that person aggravates my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and then I end up crashing for weeks or months on end, unable to do anything at all. I’ve gradually come to see that my meandering way of making art is my body’s way of protecting itself and that it probably ensures that I get more done in the long run.

I need to appreciate the way I actually make my art instead of continually wishing that I worked faster. Part of that is accepting my own art rhythms instead of fighting against them. I have fast times and slow times, times when I’m making and times when I’m not. After a major piece of work or an exhibition, I invariably need to ‘lie fallow’ for a little while.

I can always tell when I’m in this stage because the idea of making art makes me incredibly grumpy. I just have no motivation for it and even though I have ideas, I can’t bring myself to do anything about them. If I try to push through and do it anyway, I end up ruining pieces or souring myself on a good idea. So instead, I catch up with the rest of my life: I rest, knit, read, organise household stuff, garden, visit friends, bake cakes and declutter cupboards.

It’s been five months since I finished The Diary Project and I would normally be out the other side and onto the next big art thing by now. However, with my son being ill and then my trip to Australia, my schedule has fallen behind and I’m still stuck in the unwinding/rewinding stage.

In this particular fallow period, I’ve been working in the garden. It’s been very neglected in the last couple of years because I haven’t had the energy for it but in the last week, I’ve remembered how much I need the garden. Being outside makes me feel a lot better, it helps my mood and my health and I want to get the garden to a level where it’s a restful and healing space for me. Unusually, instead of trying to do it all at once and getting overwhelmed and giving up, I’ve been breaking it down into small manageable chunks and doing one tiny area at a time and I’m starting to see results. I think that ‘little and often’ was the valuable lesson that I took from drawing every day last year. Now if I can just apply it to my art again…

I can always tell when I’m starting to come out of my art funk when I reach The Manic Mad Project Stage. In the past, I’ve impulsively wanted to do things like buying a piano (I can’t play), learn to play the harp (can’t do that either), learn bellydancing (I’ve got a big belly, it seemed a shame to let it go to waste) and various other ideas that seem perfectly sensible at the time but involve me having far more time and energy than I actually do. My poor, long-suffering family have learnt to to dread the words, “hey, you know what would be a really great idea…”

Sometimes I actually go ahead and start one of my mad ideas, especially decorating projects because for some reason, those always seem practical and achievable. Sadly this often doesn’t end well because I’m notorious for running out of steam half way through and abandoning things - especially since the mad project stage is usually a precursor to a new burst of art energy and in a knock-down fight between decorating and art, art always wins.

I’ve learnt through bitter experience that it’s wise to run such things past my family. If they say ‘no way, are you completely nuts?’ or sound a note of sensible caution, then I probably ought to listen to them. If they say “why don’t you take piano lessons first and see if you like it” and my answer is “where’s the fun in that?”, then it’s a sure sign that I’ve reached The Manic Mad Project Stage and need to get back into the studio before all hell breaks out.

So… last night I decided that I wanted to own chickens. I’m doing up the garden, I want to grow more vegetables and our family is interested in environmental things like micro generation of power (we have solar panels that heat our hot water) and getting off-grid as much as possible. So a couple of urban chickens producing lovely fresh eggs wasn’t that out of left field - food yards instead of miles, it would be great!

Actually, I originally thought that both chickens and a beehive would be the way to go but apparently I’m learning because I recognised that bee-keeping was probably a bit beyond me and discarded the idea before enthusiastically announcing it to my bemused family. But I honestly thought that the chickens were perfectly reasonable. One little chicken ark and two chickens - how hard could it be? My family kept chickens when I was a teenager so I know how to look after them - in theory. What could possibly go wrong?

Yes, well… apparently, my family did not share my wild enthusiasm for this wonderful idea and I was told in no uncertain terms that there would be no chickens unless egg prices went through the roof or the fall of civilisation seemed imminent. So it looks like The Manic Mad Project Stage may be starting and the art should be back soon. In the meantime, I faithfully promise my family that I won’t start any large decorating projects and I’ll continue gardening in a slow, sensible and sustainable fashion.

Um, digging a pond isn’t an unreasonable idea, is it?

Something a bit different today - my very first blog tour. Alyson B. Stanfield, author of I’d Rather Be in the Studio! The Artist’s No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion is here to promote her book. I recommend visiting the other stops on the blog tour, I read them all last week and it was fascinating to see everyone else’s questions.

Read on to find out how you can win a free copy of her book, but first here’s our short interview:

KH: Firstly, I’d like to congratulate you on the book, Alyson, I think it’s amazing and an incredibly valuable resource for artists. I’ve already started working my way through the exercises, I’m currently rewriting my old artists’ statement using your guidelines and although it’s not finished yet, I already feel that the new statement is going to be much more accessible and powerful.

AS: Kirsty, I’m so glad to hear that! I’m glad that you found value in the book right away–that you could pick it up and use it immediately.

KH: I did have one small problem with the book though – it was really tough to come up with a question for the blog tour because every time I thought of one, I’d turn the page and find you’d answered it already! It was as though you were anticipating my needs before I even knew I had them.

AS: I’m psychic that way.

KH: I know you’re a big fan of blogging for artists, as am I. However, I’ve noticed that much of the art world doesn’t seem to have caught up with us on this; I feel that I’m far better known online than offline. So my question is, how can an artist translate blogging success into offline art world success?

AS: Oh, wow! You are spot on with this question, Kirsty.

First, let’s define “the art world.” I’m going to assume that you mean the traditional art world that is defined by high-end galleries and museums. Is that correct? (I tend to believe that there are many different art worlds that are somewhat oblivious to one another.)

Second, remember that blogging is only one tool in your marketing arsenal. It has to be part of an overall self-promotion plan in which everything works together to help you succeed. Again, I return to your original question, which is a search for “offline art world success.” And I have to reiterate what I wrote in the book: You must define success for yourself (pages 9-12). Knowing what “offline art success” means to you will help you clarify your path.

The best advice I can give you (an artist in the “online art world”) is to keep it up. The more people who know you, the better off you are. It doesn’t matter if the people are in a virtual or real space. It only matters that you are known and that you keep your name in front of people.

At the same time, most art needs to be appreciated in a real space. And most people need to see the art in a real space in order to fully value its complexities. That means getting your art out there and on exhibit as much as possible. Keep showing, keep showing, keep showing. Use your online contacts to set up shows in new venues or to trade venues with artists in other locations. Differentiate yourself from other artists (and other artist-bloggers) as much as possible.

Kirsty, I loved the energy behind The Diary Project. I think this was a stellar example of how to bring the virtual world into a real space. Artists who create online projects such as these should also come up with some sort of marketing plans to go with them. These might include mailings (snail mail as well as email), updates to patrons and potential galleries, being a guest blogger on other sites, creating articles about the experience, issuing press releases, and so forth.

Getting your art appreciated in the real world might also mean developing strategic alliances with others (pages 190-193). In The Diary Project, I can see possible strategic alliances with a stationery (envelope) supplier, stamp collectors, or even with the post office. I can’t tell you that this will meet your definition of success, but I can tell you that these people exist in a real space and are involved in the real as well as the virtual world.

Bottom line: an online presence can’t be seen as separate from your overall goals. Take a serious look at how the blogging fits in with your definition of success and what you need to do to supplement and to build on your Internet fame.

KH: Thanks for your detailed answer, Alyson, that’s really helpful to me and I hope it’ll be helpful to my readers as well. Guess it’s time to do the first step in your book and define just what I mean by success.

Thanks for visiting Up All Night Again, Alyson and best of luck with the book.

And now onto the all-important freebie! Visit this site, read the instructions, and enter. Your odds are good as Alyson is giving away a free copy on most of the blog tour stops. You can increase your odds by visiting the other blog tour stops and entering on those sites as well. I highly recommend that you do this as the book is great, with masses of helpful information and lots of well placed nudges for even the most reluctant artist (and let’s face it, when it comes to promoting ourselves, most of us need all the help we can get). In short, it’s a very helpful addition to any artist’s library. Although I got my copy for free, I would have gladly paid for it; I found it much more useful than the other books I’ve read on this subject.

I’ve been working my way through Alyson B. Stanfield’s fantastic new book, I’d Rather Be In The Studio.

Instead of reading the book from cover to cover, Stanfield encourages her readers to dive in and read and then act on the chapters that relate to where they are right now. The one that immediately leaped out at me was the chapter on writing an artist’s statement.

I wrote my current statement in the final year of my degree - six years ago this summer! Sure, I’ve tweaked it a bit since then but when I put up my website last year, I realised that it read like something an art student would write to impress a tutor. Obviously that was appropriate at the time but it isn’t so helpful now. However, I needed to get the website up and I knew that I would noodle around until the end of time if given half an excuse, so I decided to let it stand and change it at a later date. That later date has finally arrived. Alyson’s system for writing a statement, based around a series of helpful writing prompts, has inspired me to start writing a statement that’s a bit friendlier and more accessible with much less ‘art wank’ (what, it’s a technical term!).

I thought I’d share some of the process with you, so here’s my answer to the question,
“How do you begin an artwork?”

I usually begin with an idea, often a single sentence written in the notebook that I keep by my bed. My ideas can take a long time to come to the surface and even longer for me to act on them. I’m not a quick artist - I often think about pieces for several years before I make them! A lot of working out happens in my head first and then I usually wait until I’m absolutely compelled to make a piece before I start. It often feels like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces have to be slowly swirled around in my mind before I can start the actual making.

Next the idea enters the test piece stage, at which point it might stall because it just doesn’t work. I’ll noodle around with the test piece for a while, rethinking things, trying other approaches and fitting more pieces of the puzzle together until I eventually find a solution or discard the idea altogether on the basis that it was shallow, pointless or just a bit crappy.

I absolutely love the problem solving aspect of making art. My art needs to work on three different but related levels: the practical level (will it fall down?), the aesthetic level (does it look right?) and finally, the intellectual level (does it convey the right meaning?). All three things must be in balance for me to consider it a successful piece and I constantly look for elegant solutions to all three problems. I like simplicity in my art, it’s good when something is ‘just so’. It’s important that I don’t say too much or too little and I know a piece is right when the solution works precisely and completely.

…..

I don’t know how much, if any, of this piece of writing will make it into the final statement but just being nudged to think about my process again has already proved inspiring and useful. I’m feeling less stuck and more connected to my art than I have for a couple of months.

Yesterday’s colour was green. Not only was it St Patrick’s Day – apparently celebrated with great joie de vivre in Sydney – but I spent a delightful afternoon exploring the Royal Botanic Gardens with local artist, Wendy Shortland. Wendy kindly showed me around this beautiful green space and we had a grand old time admiring the plants and wildlife.

There was much to see and I took plenty of reference photos of natural forms. Yet the thing that struck me most was the strangeness of the living bamboo covered with graffiti. I don’t always like graffiti; often it can seem intrusive and destructive and I’m particularly ambivalent about graffiti on trees and rocks. Up in the Blue Mountains, seeing graffiti on trees in the rainforest threw me into a rage at the stupidity of people. However, in this case, it had resulted in powerful totemic sculptures that reminded me of the Aboriginal funeral poles I’d seen a couple of days earlier in the Museum of Contemporary Art. The harsh scratched writing had been softened, stretched and transformed by the living plants to form a beautiful monument to the basic human urge towards mark-making. I am still ambivalent about this need to mark other living things as our territory, yet it was impossible to deny the compelling accidental beauty of the end result.

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti on bamboo, Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti on bamboo, Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti on bamboo, Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney

I’ve always been captivated by this sort of communal art form where aesthetics are not always the driving force. In the early 90’s, I spent a lot of time looking at African sacred objects that had been worn smooth by thousands of respectful hands or covered with nails to the point of bristling. I also studied Western traditions of sacred objects – medieval relics, votary offerings, rosary beads, museum displays and the like. I longed to make something with that same sort of presence but realised that it wasn’t possible for me to simply copy an existing form or process and ‘fake’ a sacred object. Years later, it’s something I’m still struggling with and much of my work using repetitive processes hinges on that concept of how to imbue an object with power and meaning.

Back in the gardens, I was also very enamoured with the enormous fruit bats that hung from the trees like giant cocoons.

Kirsty Hall: Fruit Bats, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney

En masse, they are incredibly noisy – a plane overhead will set of a cacophony of squawking. Indeed, Australian wildlife as a whole seems quite loud to me, many of the birds can raise a real racket – the evening roosting of the parrots has to be heard to be believed. Perhaps they need to state their presence so loudly to combat the daunting distances of this vast land.

Today, I too am feeling daunted – only two and a half days left and still so much to see. Part of me wants to rush over to Sydney again and spend another afternoon looking around, while a greater part of me is arguing for a day spent on the beach in Manly! There has been so much rushing around lately and I feel overfull of textures, shapes, sounds and experiences; I know it will take me months to digest what I’ve seen here.

Kirsty Hall: Drawings in progress, Feb 2008

Starting a drawing can be scary. Drawing on crappy paper (that’s a technical term!) can be one way to overcome the fear of the blank page.

When I was first learning to draw, my dad would bring home piles of A3 computer paper from his office for me. It was the large thin folded stuff with perforations down the side. Apparently it sometimes used to spool through the printers and couldn’t be re-used - at least that’s what he told me!

It was great paper to draw on because there was never any fear of wasting expensive cartridge paper: it was already waste, so it didn’t matter if I ruined it. I used to sit in front of the TV drawing actors, newsreaders and the like. Documentaries and interviews were the best because they featured a lot of fairly stationary head shots. For a teenager living out in the country with no access to life classes, it was a surprisingly effective way to practice portraiture and speed drawing.

Drawing the envelopes for The Diary Project was similar - if I messed up an envelope it didn’t matter and I felt no guilt about tossing it in the recycling. In fact, I sometimes used to draw on the front and back of a couple of envelopes just to loosen up or to test out new techniques or materials. Now my envelopes are all finished and I want to take what I’ve learnt into making drawings on ‘real’ paper with the idea of making a series of drawings that could be sold. Yet even after a year of daily drawing, it’s still surprisingly intimidating to sit down in my studio and look at those empty sheets of good paper. Maybe I just need to take a stack of envelopes upstairs to comfort myself with…

Welcome to the Cheat’s Guide To Blogging - find an old piece of writing, edit slightly, add pictures and serve!

I was just looking up some writing from my degree course for an unrelated reason and found this piece from 1999 that I thought was worth posting

…..

Abstract art has always had a very different role than representational art. Representational art is very much tied to how well the representation works. Is it “a likeness”: by its faithful representation of nature does it somehow capture the soul of the person, animal or place depicted? We usually judge representational art on how well it convinces us of the reality of the image.

Our response to representational art is also determined by sentimental factors. Is it a portrait of someone we love or a place that is special to us? Can we sense a little piece of the person’s soul as we gaze into their unseeing eyes? Do we even like cats or eagles or horses? These things affect how a piece of representational art is perceived by the person who looks at it. Something that may seem kitsch, unappealing or simply bad to one person will be cherished by another because of whom or what it represents.

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project Envelope from 5th February 2007

Abstract art is somewhat different. There is less to hold onto. It is a Rorschach blot, a screen onto which the viewer can project their own desires and hidden thoughts. Abstract art opens up the unconscious mind, it forces people to think about what they are seeing.

Many people resist this. After all, it is hard to know what to say when faced with something that doesn’t fall into simple categories like “dog” or “cat” or “child”. We are so deeply used to seeing in symbols and categories that images which do not fall into pre-conceived patterns can be hard to look at. Literally not knowing what we are looking at can make it hard to see at all. Yet it can also challenge our brain to new leaps into the unknown. It can open up places in our mind where poetry might begin. It can inspire us, scare us or anger us.

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project Envelope from 12th December 2007

Historically, abstract art and representational art are often pitted against each other. Personally I don’t see them as being in conflict. I think that people make art and look at art for many different reasons and I think that art needs to be broad enough to encompass many different viewpoints and many different ideas.

Many of the problems that people have with contemporary art stem from the fact that they are afraid of it. I think that people are often afraid of looking stupid if they don’t understand art.

But art shouldn’t be a test.

Hey, half the time I don’t understand art and I’ve looked at a lot of it! I’ve also read extensively on the subject and it’s my opinion that most people who write about art don’t understand how artists think and work. So don’t look at those words first, just look at the piece and think about how it makes you feel. You might not know as much about art as an art historian or critic but how a piece of art makes you feel is every bit as relevant, worthy and important.

Unsurprisingly, there’s plenty to read about goals and resolutions in the blogosphere right now.

iHanna has a good post with lots of inspiring (and occasionally daunting!) links.

Sister Diane from the Craftypod makes the very smart suggestion that you only pick one thing that you really want to do. I don’t think I can quite manage that but it’s something that I’m bearing in mind as I continue to very s-l-o-w-l-y refine my list of goals.

After being in a funk the other day, I did a whole load of journalling on the subject of goals and discovered that part of my problem is that I often confuse my goals and desires with the things that I feel I ought to be doing.

For example, I know I should be getting on with making Pelt…

Now this hasn’t been a problem in previous years, I’ve just stuck those ’shoulds’ right on my goal list and felt damn virtuous about it too. However, in the last couple of months I’ve been following a conscious ‘no guilt’ policy. So if something makes me feel guilty then I do something to get rid of that guilt; this can include finishing things, getting rid of them or paying someone else to deal with it. The ‘no guilt’ policy is working well for me, except that it’s apparently scuppered my usual goal setting, which was firmly based around the concept of guilt.

So often our goals and resolutions are negative - lose weight; quit smoking; get fit in the next five minutes, you lazy person; become a better friend; live life more fully; read more intellectual books; do this ‘good’ thing; don’t do that other ‘bad’ thing. We often seem to start with the idea that who we are right now just isn’t enough and we’re flawed somehow, so the focus always seems to be on making ourselves into a ‘better’ person. Sometimes this can be a good thing - making positive changes in our lives can be very empowering. However, there’s a big difference between making a change because we genuinely want to and punishing ourselves for not being perfect yet.

Guess what, you’re never going to be perfect and neither am I!

What would it feel like if everything on your goal list was completely and unambiguously POSITIVE?

I don’t know either but this year I want to give it a try.

Since I was still struggling with my very insistent ’shoulds’, I did a mind map in my art journal about what I want from the year. Writing out a list of 18 things - some small, some large - that I genuinely want felt very powerful. When was the last time you let yourself think about the things that you desire? And not the things you think you ’should’ want either but the things you honestly want.

Of course, I’m also very task orientated and I love to set myself very defined projects and tick things off lists. So writing things like ’spend more time in the library with the lights off and the candles on’ seemed a little silly at first. How do I quantify that? How can I make that into a proper achievable goal with a definite target? Hmmm, should I start a database to count the days when I manage to sit down and properly relax? Ha, you probably think I’m joking… but many a true word was spoken in jest, says the girl who keeps a database of all the books she reads each year!

My mind map of desires isn’t a goal list yet - the other thing I discovered whilst journalling was that the goals I did best in reaching last year were the ones that were very specific and had quantifiable targets (yay, there is a need for those databases!) - but it is a start in a new, and slightly scary, direction for me.

Happy 2008, I hope you all had a good holiday season if you celebrate and that you’re approaching this new year filled with creative energy and enthusiasm.

I don’t know if I am yet. I posted the last envelope last night and spent some time bouncing around being very happy because I had successfully completed the year without a single missed envelope.

However, today I’m feeling a little bereft. I enjoyed the ritual of marking every day and it’s hard to let go of that. How will I know that 2008 existed if I don’t mark it in some way? My mind is racing with ’substitute projects’. Should I commit to art journalling every day? Should I take my new Moleskine notebook and divide the pages into sections so I can fill it with a year’s worth of drawings and single poetic sentences? Should I put a wallchart in my studio and mark off every day that I spend some time in there? Should I take a photograph everyday? Should I take a daily art walk where I collect objects? Should I, should I, should I, should I?

Aaaaaarggggggghhhhhhh!

I was very clear before the end of the year that I needed to allow myself some recovery time after the active phase of The Diary Project and I know that’s still true. However, my muse apparently abhors a vacuum and so I’m having to forcibly rein myself in and let my brain know that I’m not going to jump straight into doing something new. That it’s OK to let go for a little while and I’m not going to drown if I don’t have the rubber ring of a daily practice: I can just spend a little time floating and thinking and that’s OK too because it’s still being creative. And it’s definitely needed, I can feel that it’s needed but even though I know that, it’s still the hardest part of the creative process for me. Being a bit of a control freak, I don’t do well with letting go even when I know that I need to.

Generally I like this time of year, I enjoy looking back over what I’ve done the year before and setting goals for the year to come. However, I think it’s going to take me a couple of days to do that this year because I need to process how I feel about the end of the first phase of The Diary Project and honestly assess what it is that I need and want from the coming year. I’ve spent today telling myself, “it’s better to set the right goals a couple of days ‘late’, rather than rushing in and committing to things that are wrong for you just because you have this superstitious attachment to the 1st January.”

Well, I’m off to lie down in bed with a cup of herbal tea, a hot water bottle and my art journal to see if I can calm the maelstrom in my brain. I hope you all have the space and time for a little reflection too.

I’ve been dying to tell you about this since last month and I’m glad that now I can…

I’m delighted to announce that the last Craftypod of 2007 is an interview with me. It’s pretty interesting, if I say so myself, and Sister Diane did a fantastic job in editing our long conversation so that I sound reasonably coherent!

Many thanks to Sister Diane for her great editing, her insightful questions and for being kind enough to ask me in the first place; I very much enjoyed being interviewed by her and what a great way to round off my year of drawing.

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project Envelope from 10th December 2007

In the early hours of yesterday morning I finished a mammoth update of The Diary Project blog because I thought it would look really shoddy to Craftypod listeners if the blog was still stuck in November - it’s helpful to have a bit of a kick every now and then. Apparently I’d had a long enough break from writing about drawing and I was able to do it again without banging my head on my desk. I’m nearly up to date now, I just have a week’s worth of envelopes to write up and then I’ll be all caught up. It’s so nice to be ending the year without that hanging over me.

Wow, I can’t believe that I only have 3 days of the project left to go, it’s a very strange feeling and I’m still processing it: it feels quite unreal.

Clicking on the tab for Up All Night Again, the thought flitted quickly across my mind, “I wonder if there are any new posts?” Er no, dear, not unless you actually bother to write them!

It reminds me of the time that I accidentally hit backspace while surfing and wound up at my own Livejournal profile page. I glanced uncomprehendingly at my own interest list and thought, “hey, this person sounds way cool, I should friend them - oh, wait a minute…” Still, I guess the fact that I instinctively liked the look of myself is probably positive.

It’s been a hectic week. My 40th birthday was on Saturday and my family threw a rather fabulous party for me complete with mountains of healthy yet delicious gluten-free food. We had about 30 people there and I was very touched that so many people, some of whom had travelled quite a distance, came to celebrate with me. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have decided that I should have birthday parties more often (although probably not every year).

The chocolates are all gone and the many bunches of flowers are starting to wilt but I’m still happily playing with several of my presents, which included a pile of books, a full set of Sakura glaze pens and a very cute, tiny set of travelling watercolours with a little water brush. Art materials - the gifts that keep on giving!

Unfortunately everything else is in flux at the moment because as soon as we got the party out of the way, I had to empty my study so that it could be decorated. I can’t think what possessed me to arrange two such major events within two days of each other. I am temporarily installed in the living room and connecting to the net through the X-Box cable. The painters finished this afternoon but I need to buy a carpet and have that fitted before I can move back in. I also need to have a rethink about where everything goes and what I need to store. Oh, and buy a new desk because this Ikea one has bowed drastically in the middle, which is rather worrying in a piece of furniture that’s holding a heavy and expensive Mac!

Continuing the decluttering and organising theme of the last few months, I’m using this an opportunity to get rid of some stuff. I’ve drastically culled my art magazine collection - I gave away about 50 of them and have another huge pile to donate to the art college where I do my jewellery course. I’ve kept the ones I still refer to but it feels wonderful to pass the rest onto people who will actually use them. And as an added bonus, it frees up a lot of storage space on my shelves. Next I have to tackle my many folders of saved articles and images.

I’ve come to understand that having too much stuff weighs me down and makes it far more difficult for me to create. I had the realisation about a month ago that it didn’t matter how many neatly labelled boxes I had, if I simply had too much to store, then my shelves and cupboards were always going to be an impenetrable mess.

So lately I’ve been tackling The Cupboard Of Doom, a huge walk-in cupboard that we’ve thoroughly filled up with stuff. I’ve been systematically clearing it out; going through boxes, throwing things out, visiting the dump, filling up our weekly recycling bins and giving away hundreds of items on freecycle.

I’ve even surprised myself by being able to give away some art and craft supplies: usually I hold onto those for dear life but sorting out my studio has helped me to see what I already have and what I no longer use. Having too many supplies can actually be a disadvantage when making art because you can suffer from a sort of mental paralysis when faced with too many options. In addition, having vast quantities of supplies makes it harder to find the things you actually want to use.

Decluttering may not seem like it has much to do with art, but it feels as though what I’m really doing is making a much bigger space in my life for my art.

Lately it seems that most of my art conversations have been happening inside the computer. However, yesterday afternoon I was fortunate enough to meet up with artist, Camilla Stacey for tea and cake.

Camilla and I used to work quite closely together when we were both curating shows over at the Here Gallery, the artist-run space that Camilla was instrumental in founding. We haven’t seen as much of each other lately because we’re both taking a curating break and we live in different towns, so it was great to catch up over cheesecake and hot chocolate. The conversation ranged from our lives to our work and back again; we talked about whether I need to continue with obsessive repetition in my work and Camilla explained the rationale behind her latest ceramic pieces.

Because it’s my birthday on Saturday, Camilla brought me these fabulous thistles - she said they reminded her of my Diary Project drawings and I can see what she means.

Having people who ‘get’ your work, whether in real life or in the computer, is such a gift for any artist and I am blessed to know many people with whom I can have these sort of deep conversations. I hope you all have real life friends that you can talk art and eat cake with.

I spent some time in my local yarn store today. Sure, I needed yarn for my next couple of projects but much more than that, I needed an hour to soak up some colour and texture. I could have ordered the yarn from the shop’s website and saved myself a trip in appalling traffic but I knew that I needed to go: something in me was craving that experience. I wanted to wander around, picking up the yarns and squashing the skeins in my fingers. I needed to feel the softness, the springiness and the resistance of the different fibres. But most of all, I needed to marvel at the myriad of colours. I needed to see the ways in which different dyers had married shades together, to notice how some tones zinged and jumped, while others were muted and subtle. I spent some time holding balls of yarn next to each other, testing to see which would go well together and which were jarring or unpleasant. I didn’t have a particular project in mind, I just wanted to see what worked and what didn’t. You can learn a lot this way - maybe art teachers should stop bothering with boring old colour wheels and just take their students to a fantastic yarn store instead!

I’ve never been brilliant at colour, I don’t have the instinct for it that some artists do, but I still occasionally need a bit of colour therapy. Sometimes my muse (for want of a better word) craves time spent in art galleries, libraries, parks or beautiful buildings - and sometimes it just needs to smoosh some yarn!

I left with the yarn I’d planned to buy and only one extra thing (a bargain skein of very beautiful sock yarn) but more importantly, with my heart contented and my inspiration levels rising.

We all need to spend some time inspiring ourselves, otherwise our art will eventually run dry. What have you done to inspire yourself lately? Do you take yourself out on regular ‘artists’ dates’, as Julia Cameron recommends? I often forget and only realise that I need to once it becomes a desperate craving. If you’re in the same boat, then I hope you can take some time over the next few days or weeks to recharge those artistic batteries by doing something that’s just for you. It’s especially important to do this if you’re caught up in the seasonal madness. It doesn’t need to be much and it doesn’t need to take long but I think it’s vital to remind ourselves that our art is every bit as important as buying presents, baking cookies, decorating trees, placating relatives and all the other traditions that we may have encumbered ourselves with.

And if you don’t celebrate anything at this time of year, then maybe you can indulge in your own personal art hibernation while all around are drowning in festivities? Get a pile of good art books from the library, stock up on some exciting new materials, shut the door and spend a few days just losing yourself in play. Mmm, sounds good to me!

Sometimes correspondences in your work surprise you. me-jade recently added these two photos of mine as ‘favourites’ on Flickr.

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project envelope from the 26th July 2007

Kirsty Hall: Parse, January 2007

Although I wasn’t conscious of it when I was drawing the envelope, when I saw the two images next to each other, I was struck by how very similar the shapes are.

I’ve been concentrating on updating The Diary Project blog this week: I’m woefully behind on it and it’s getting embarrassing. I’ve been updating the blog in small chunks because that’s all I can manage right now - writing the little musings is getting to be almost impossible. I’ve pretty much run out of things to say about my work: I didn’t know this was possible but apparently it is!

I did an update on Sunday and another one this morning plus I’m about halfway through scanning more than a month’s worth of envelopes. I scanned to the end of October yesterday and felt very pleased with myself before realising that hey, we’re already half way through November.

Here’s my favourite drawing from the latest update:

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project envelope from the 21st October 2007

Hopefully I’ll get another chunk done tomorrow - although frankly, if I never have to write another word about my damn drawings, it’ll be way too soon! In the meantime, I’m off to scan envelopes, which is time consuming but thankfully a lot less mentally taxing and I can catch up on podcasts while I’m doing it.

I have always been fascinated by artists’ studios, to the extent that I even wrote my BA dissertation on them. One of the things I find so compelling about them is their very distinct aura: well-loved and much-used studios have a powerful sense of place. I’m sure it’s one reason why art trails and open studio events are so popular; being allowed into the spaces where other people create has a seductive allure and the strong suggestion of intimate secrets revealed. Personally, I can never resist having a peek at other artists’ storage systems. Is there an order that I can discern and do I understand it? Would I have arranged things differently and what does their system tell me about them? How have they organised their tools - are they a neat or a messy worker? And do they clean their brushes!

You can often get a strong sense of the artist’s personality from their studio. When I visited Barbara Hepworth’s studio in St Ives, I was struck by how very present she was: even though she was dead, it truly felt as though she’d just popped out to do a bit of drawing on the beach and she’d be back to finish off that stone carving any second now.

Artists are usually well aware that their studio is almost a person in its own right - at the very least, it has a definite genius loci or ’spirit of place’. But in order to keep this spirit happy, a studio needs to be inhabited, it needs to be worked in. I’ve often heard artists describe their studios as ‘dead’ or ’stale’ when they haven’t been working in them enough and I’m sure most artists are familiar with the need to tidy the studio after an absence or when they’re getting ready for a new series of work.

I’ve been having that discontented ‘I need to start something new’ art itch lately and have even been questioning the direction that my work has taken in past years - in short, I feel on the cusp of change. So it’s no coincidence that my studio has been undergoing a redesign in the last couple of months. In the summer I acquired some much-needed shelving and moved the desk to a better position and it instantly became a much more inviting creative space.

A studio is a working space and consequently it needs to work - things have to be accessible and easy to find, you need to know where your materials are and to have power, heat and light where you want them. Your studio also needs to be right for you and your working pattern, which is why artists’ studios are so very individual and revealing. While I’m absolutely enthralled by Francis Bacon’s re-created studio, I know I couldn’t create a single thing in it - I need more order and much more visual simplicity than that. Your studio should fit you like a pair of comfortable shoes - if it doesn’t, then you simply won’t want to spend time there. I hadn’t consciously realised how draining and unappealing I’d been finding my own studio until I started the overhaul.

It’s also important not to get hung up on romantic images of what you think an artists’ studio should look like or where it should be - spend some time exploring what your studio needs to look and feel like. When I first graduated, I paid for three months of studio time in a cold, noisy building on the other side of town because I thought that ‘a real artist needs a proper studio’ and I thought that meant a building with other artists in it. Then a conversation with a friend made me realise that I did all my best work at home and always had done - when I was in college, I used to work in the evenings on the dining room table and then take my work into college and install it in my space. My days at college weren’t usually spent making - instead they were spent researching in the library, updating my sketchbook, pottering around seeing what everyone else was up to, drinking endless cups of tea and gossiping!

Recognising this fact made it apparent why dragging myself over to the cold, expensive studio had been so very hard - there were no friends, no communal cups of tea and no nice library books!

We’re fortunate enough to have a large house, so I promptly cancelled the studio, happily put the rent money towards materials and got on with working from home. For a while I worked downstairs in our basement before discovering that it was wrong for the kind of work I make - everything got damp or dirty and I didn’t like going down there because it was too dark and gloomy. Eventually I moved up to a spare room in the top floor of the house where I have cream walls, lots of natural light, plenty of warmth and carpeting - apparently I am an artist who needs a lot of home comforts in order to create! Yet even when I was finally installed in the right space, it took me until this year to get my studio working properly and it’s still not quite how I want it.

So this afternoon - bone tired after a bad night of insomnia and with all my creative wells dry - I once again found myself tending to The Spirit Of My Studio. My son helped me carry up boxes of materials from the appropriately named Cupboard Of Doom. I then spent an hour sorting through them, getting rid of some things, rehoming misplaced items and then labelling the boxes with my beloved Dymo labeller before stacking them neatly on the shelves.

It’s still not quite right in there but each time I organise my studio, it gets a little bit clearer. And I feel that space inside, the space where the new work is beginning to grow, getting just that little bit bigger and I breathe a little more easily.

I think I just fell a little bit in love. Suzi Blu is a cute young art goddess who makes short videos about art journalling that she puts up on YouTube.

I just love her quirkiness and her passion. She’s done lots of videos - there’s a list here - and I’m having a happy evening working my way through them.

OK, I have a BIG confession to make. All through college, I kept immaculate, beautifully presented and very professional A4 sketchbooks. Looking up at the shelves above me, I see fifteen of them in an ordered line, their spines labelled with the dates. They’re almost identical - always portrait style and usually black, with a couple of patterned ones when I couldn’t find black ones.

Not for me the messy, spilling out at the seams, arty sketchbook barely held together with bits of string or rubber bands. Although I adore that style when I look at other people’s journals, at the time I just couldn’t bring myself to be that messy. Instead, my sketchbooks closed tidily on pages filled with perfectly aligned, neatly trimmed images and printed or carefully handwritten thoughts on my art. It’s slightly odd because I’m certainly not a naturally tidy person - maybe I was searching for a safe space within the chaos?

I spent a lot of time on those sketchbooks. I kept huge boxes of trimmed photos that I regularly culled from magazines and I would spend happy hours sorting through them looking for just the right combination of images that would show where my inspiration was coming from. I patiently selected the photos that showed my work to its best advantage, as well as the ‘during’ shots that documented the process and lined them up and taped them in. I added documentation from exhibitions I was involved in and analysed what I could have done better. I went through hundreds of rolls of my beloved double-sided sticky tape. I thought of my sketchbooks as works of art in their own right and they truly are. When I reread them, I can see that they are wonderful objects, as well as being useful documents that accurately chart my artistic process through the years. I’m justifiably proud of them and I love to look up at that neat line of them on my bookshelf.

But… but… but…

I got out of college and my sketchbooks sort of ground to a halt and then stopped almost completely. Every so often I’ll pick up the current one, write an ‘it’s been far too long since I’ve written anything in here’ entry, post in a couple of pictures, write down a few ideas and then guiltily ignore it for another six months. I think I’ve filled nearly two in the last five years - me, an artist who once went through a sketchbook every three months or so! It’s pitiful and it’s been weighing on me a lot recently.

I’m sure it’s no coincidence that my sketchbook use tailed off when I started blogging - a lot of my writing energy undoubtedly went into my online journalling instead. In addition, no longer being in college seemed to take a lot of the ‘people judging me’ energy out of it. There just wasn’t the same drive to do my sketchbooks that there had once been.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never stopped writing down my ideas - I have a little notebook by my bed where most of my art pieces start and another notebook in my handbag to catch the ideas that happen when I’m out of the house and I treasure both of those. I also write ideas on my computer if that’s where I happen to be, keep a card index box of ‘art ideas’ on my desk and for the last two years I’ve been doing a series of ink drawings in an ever increasing pile of A5 cartridge pads.

But those well documented, bright, shiny and oh-so-acceptable sketchbooks - er, not so much! I’m kind of embarrassed about it and I feel guilty and cross with myself. But when I think about sitting down and taping in photos, writing about what I’ve been doing, trimming photocopies and images to fit the pages and lining everything up perfectly - well, my heart just sinks. It feels overwhelming and impossible and it’s time to admit it; something that once brought me genuine joy and satisfaction, now just fills me with dread.

After watching Suzi’s videos, I thought ‘enough already, I’ve got to do something about this situation’. So I picked up the mostly unused moleskine sketchbook sitting next to my computer and let rip with some black goache, white ink pen and a couple of my beloved Inktense pencils. Wham, two pages of art journalling done in about half an hour and boy, do I feel better. No, it’s definitely not my perfect and pristine sketchbook but it’s obvious that the old way isn’t working any more, so I need to try something new.

Our ’shoulds’ can really inhibit our art; they stifle the flow of creativity within us. Yes, it would be nice if I could keep making those beautiful ordered sketchbooks and I probably ’should’ but it’s far more important that I keep my art going. On the first page of my new journal I wrote in coloured pencil “It’s time to get messy” and it is. Perhaps one day those pristine sketchbooks will be right for me again but for now, it’s time to let them go.

Joanne B Kaar is a Scottish artist who works with fibre and bookmaking. In 2006 she completed a three month residency in Durness in Sutherland, which she documented in a fascinating blog.

Joanne B Kaar - Sango Sands Seapapers

During the residency she made a series of books from handmade paper, often using local materials. Some of these books were subjected to pretty harsh treatment like being buried or thrown in the sea! It’s amazing that they’ve survived as well as they have - it’s easy to forget how robust paper can be as a medium.

Sutherland is a place that is very dear to my heart. Most of my childhood holidays were spent in Achnahaird in Ross and Cromarty and every holiday included a day trip to Lochinver in the neighbouring Sutherland. Although it was very close as the crow flies, it was an hour-long drive on a narrow, twisting and often terrifying road. I’ve just checked and according to the AA it’s 16 miles yet takes an hour and 8 minutes - that should give you an idea of just how bad the road is! It was worth it though - not least for the annual visit to Achins Bookshop in Inverkirkaig - apparently the most remote bookshop in the British Isles. I always saved most of my holiday money so that I could splurge on books and I still remember the feeling of deep contentment that walking out with a bag of carefully chosen books gave me. I also have fond memories of standing on the pier in Lochinver watching the fishing boats unloading and sitting on the seafront eating homemade pies from the incredibly good local bakery.

Durness is a lot further up the coast and not somewhere I’ve visited but Joanne’s photographs of the area, with all their Highland familiarity, certainly brought up plenty of nostalgia. I love living in Bristol and feel very at home here, but so many of my creative roots lie in those summer holidays in the Highlands - long days spent damming little streams with my brothers and cousins, building complex sand sculptures with my Dad, riding invisible horses, grinding down sandstone in an attempt to make pigment (I used to pretend I was a neolithic cave painter!), patiently drawing for hours in the caravan on rainy days and writing bad poetry once I was a teenager. For several years now I’ve been needing to reconnect with those roots and I know that I absolutely must make a trip to the Highlands soon because the feeling is getting quite desperate. While I don’t really subscribe to the idea of a ‘muse’, I have learnt over the years that it’s not a good idea to ignore particularly persistent creative cravings.

Where do your creative roots lie? Is it a place? A feeling? A particular smell? A certain kind of pencil or the feel of a fresh sketchbook?

1: Keep Something Back

You don’t have to share your whole process and every piece of art you make. It can be nourishing to keep a private sketchbook or make little test pieces that you don’t intend to share. I have a couple of sketchbooks that I don’t usually show to anyone. Apart from anything else, we all need a place where we feel emotionally free to make bad art without worrying about an audience!

2: Let Yourself Play

Remember what got you into art in the first place and take some time to reconnect with that joy. This can easily get forgotten when you’re a professional artist and bogged down in promotional activities and exhibition schedules, so make sure you also schedule some playing time. Taking classes in a different technique or trying out an exciting new art material can be a good way to access what Buddhists calls ‘beginner’s mind’, that wonderful state where everything is exciting and fresh.

3: Find A Balance

Balance your practice by finding forms that complement each other. For example, if your work takes a long time and involves long and complicated projects, then regularly doing little pieces that can be finished quickly is a good counterbalance. It helps you feel as though you really are getting stuff done. Artists have traditionally done this by using drawing as a complement to painting or sculpture but it’s not the only option, performance, photography, writing, music or another form can also fill that need for immediacy.

Conversely, if you tend to complete works quickly, taking on a longer, more involved project can be an interesting challenge. Working in series is often a way of doing this but maybe you can think of other more unusual ways.

4: Love Your Process

I’ve seen far too many people, particularly at art school, endlessly struggling with a medium or form that they just don’t enjoy. Why? Art is hard enough without handicapping yourself with a process that doesn’t excite you. You need a certain amount of joy to get through all the bits that you don’t like, so don’t lumber yourself with a form that just doesn’t do it for you - it’s not noble, it’s just masochistic!

5: Accept The Lows

Anyone who tells you that art is a wonderful, creative thing that always makes you happy is an idiot!

Annoyance, small bursts of depression and large doses of frustration are a normal part of the artistic process. It doesn’t mean that you’re no good, that you’re not cut out to be an artist or that you’re doing the wrong thing, it just means that you’re engaged with your work. Just make sure that you do have a deep core of love for your process - if you’re annoyed all the time then you probably need to reconsider your medium (see number 4).

In my experience, anger and frustration usually happen right before a breakthrough and it’s a sign that I need to stick with a piece - although if I’m throwing things around the studio and yelling, I tend to take a day off! Feeling low usually happens when I’ve just completed something big - I call it The Exhibition Blues - and it’s always a sign that I need to step away from art for a while to recharge my batteries, assess what I’ve just finished and get ready for the next piece.

6: Fill Up The Well

Art doesn’t form in a vacuum and it’s important to replenish your inspiration on a regular basis. Julia Cameron suggests regular Artist’s Dates, where you schedule inspirational treats for yourself and I’d totally agree. This could involve reading art books; going to the theatre or cinema; visiting art galleries or museums; taking photograph’s at a farmer’s market; going for a walk; taking a day trip or indulging in some new materials at the art shop - the key is that it should be something that nourishes and inspires you. If you’re starting to feel a bit stale or low, then try this.

7: Write It Down

Give your brain a helping hand and write down all your ideas, not just the ones that seem immediately good and relevant. You can always edit them later and you never know when a seemingly unimportant thought will develop into a larger project. I often think that I’ve come up with a brand new idea but invariably I’ll find a single sentence in an old notebook that was clearly the original spark. New art takes time to grow, at least several years in my experience. Writing things down is a way of planting your ideas and then letting them develop while you’re busy getting on with something else - I call this process ‘composting’.

The notebook that I keep by my bed is the most important of the 5 or 6 journals and sketchbooks that I use. I wouldn’t want to be without the other notebooks because they all serve different purposes but the majority of my ideas start out in that little bedside book.

Bed is apparently where I think best but it varies from person to person. I know someone who keeps a waterproof board and pencil in her bathroom because she gets her best ideas in the bath. Someone else I know writes ideas on the steamy doors of her shower cubicle and then dashes out to grab some paper before they evaporate! Work out where you think best and make absolutely sure that you keep a way of recording ideas there.

8: Make Art A Priority

You need to make a space for art in your life. If art isn’t a priority then it simply won’t get done and you’ll get to the end of another year wondering why you haven’t made any work.

I do know that it’s difficult: if you’re working another job to pay your bills or raising children, then finding time and energy to make art can be especially tough but you need to keep hold of the idea that you’re an artist, that it’s central to who you are and that you’re going to keep making work somehow.

You may need to work in the margins of the day - on your lunch break, on public transport, as you’re waiting for a meeting to start, while the kids are napping or when the rest of the household is asleep. When I worked in a hospital, I used to sketch the visitors to the canteen on my lunchbreak. I didn’t do it every day but I did it enough that it noticeably improved my drawing at a time when I had no access to life drawing classes. I know several writers who’ve written zines and even novels in spare minutes at work. Other artists find ways to incorporate their paid work into their art, perhaps by using it as the subject of their work.

It’s easy to think that you need vast swathes of time in order to be an artist but that’s not always the case: what you need is a steady and regular commitment. Yes, having lots of time can be great but it can also make you freeze. When I was at college I used to spend most of the day talking to people, p